


lock some fire away

by parcequelle



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22576522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: Kes smiled again; Kes smiled so much it made B’Elanna’s stomach cramp.
Relationships: Kes (Star Trek)/B'Elanna Torres
Comments: 14
Kudos: 31
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5, Women of Star Trek





	lock some fire away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eratoschild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eratoschild/gifts).



> Set mid-late S3.
> 
> For Eratoschild for Chocolate Box 2020 - happy fic reading! I hope you enjoy this!

If B’Elanna could have chosen how this day would turn out, she would not have chosen to get thrown into an alien prison cell, on an alien planet, when all she was doing was surveying a dilithium mine. She would not have chosen a cold, damp cavern somewhere deep inside a sulphurous mountain as the alien prison cell’s location. She would not have chosen for all this to happen just after the sun had gone down and the cold had set in.

She definitely wouldn’t have chosen Kes as her catastrophe companion.

For the tenth time in five minutes, B’Elanna slid her eyes over to where Kes was sitting and found her looking the same as she had since the start: highly aware, a little tense, and largely undisturbed. Kes was leaning back against the stone wall – it was damp; she must have been freezing – with her legs crossed in front of her, her palms resting flat on her knees. Her eyes were open, and she was barely moving as she conducted a slow, thorough catalogue of the cell.

B’Elanna remembered, then, that this wasn’t Kes’ first time in captivity, and that the Kazon had been far crueller to her than the burly, reptilian aliens who had them now. She and Kes had been manhandled a bit as they were captured, blindfolded, and pushed into the cell, but they hadn’t been beaten (yet). B’Elanna still had no idea what they wanted from her, and she’d learnt the hard way that screaming and punching wasn’t going to get her any closer to finding out. 

Not that it hadn’t felt good to do it.

One thing her lone Security/Tactical course at the Academy had taught her was how to keep track of blocks of time; she had always had a knack for it, and she estimated that they had been here about two and a half hours so far. Twenty minutes of that consisted of B’Elanna bellowing at the guards who had locked the door behind them and trying her damnedest to kick it down. The rest of the time she had lost to a more methodical approach, an annoyingly logical Starfleet sweep in the absence of a tricorder, a phaser, or a commbadge: search for water, search for cracks to pry open, search for a way out. Search for something to use as a weapon. These brilliant tips never told you what to do when you didn’t have access to any of those things, when all you had was the clothes on your back and a tiny, delicate civilian you had to keep safe, but B’Elanna tried to follow them anyway.

She came up empty.

Sighing, she walked back over to Kes and sat down beside her, elbows on her knees, careful to avoid the damp wall. ‘How are you?’ she asked, after a moment where she wondered if she should, and then a moment where she wondered if it was stupid to wonder.

Kes turned those huge, clear, serene eyes on her and smiled her soft smile. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. Of course she did. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m frustrated,’ B'Elanna grumbled. She narrowly resisted the urge to kick the floor like a grumpy child. ‘I've swept the room three times in every way I can think of, and I still can’t find a single way out. I can’t break down the door, the locking mechanism is somewhere on the other side, and they don’t even have any guards posted. If they did, at least we might have been able to steal the keys.’

Kes had been listening to this rant with her usual impossible patience, but now, she got a thoughtful look on her face.

Interested in spite of herself, B’Elanna leaned in. ‘What is it?’

‘What you were describing,’ Kes murmured. She glanced around them at the damp, chilly cell. ‘What you said about the mechanism being outside... maybe technology isn’t the answer.’

B’Elanna blinked at her. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I mean,’ Kes said, ‘what if you’re right? You’re a brilliant engineer, B’Elanna, and one of the most inventive minds on the ship. There’s rarely a puzzle you can’t solve, or an obstacle you can’t overcome.’

The compliment was as unexpected as anything else that had happened that day, but it was more welcome, too. (Even if it was weird. Even if she didn’t know what to do with it. Even if it sort of made her blush.)

‘My point is,’ Kes went on, before B’Elanna could ask precisely that, ‘that if you can’t find another way out of here, it probably means there isn’t one. Not in the standard sense, anyway…’ Kes bit her lip, eyes bright with rapid calculations B’Elanna could almost see. ‘I have an idea,’ she said eventually, after a few minutes of silence during which B’Elanna had stared at her, fascinated, more than she probably should have. ‘Maybe it’s more of an… experiment. I don’t know if it will work, but—’

‘Kes, honestly, I’m up for any suggestion right now,’ B’Elanna told her, grabbing her gesticulating hand on impulse. ‘We won’t know it won’t work if we don’t try, will we?’

‘No,’ Kes said, smiling. She squeezed B’Elanna’s hand. ‘We won’t.’

‘Just tell me what I need to do.’

*

A little while later, after Kes had meditated and B’Elanna had paced the cell, stared at the wall, and paced the cell again, they sat facing each other on the floor. Looking into Kes’ eyes, holding both Kes’ hands in her own, B’Elanna felt unaccountably nervous; as though Kes could sense it – Kes could probably sense it – she smiled a reassuring smile and said, ‘Are you ready? We can wait longer, if you prefer.’

B’Elanna swallowed, shook her head, and then said, ‘Just tell me what you need me for, again?’

Kes smiled again; Kes smiled so much it made B’Elanna’s stomach cramp. ‘You’ll be my anchor to the physical plane – your presence will keep me from getting lost out there, on the other plane, or… in someone else’s head. You don’t have to do anything. Just keep hold of my hands, and squeeze them if you feel like I might be drifting too far.’

‘But how will I know?’ B’Elanna asked. 

‘You might feel it,’ Kes said, ‘or you might see that my eyes look strange, or that I seem very tired… I can’t describe it exactly, I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I know you will,’ Kes said. ‘All right?’

B’Elanna nodded. ‘I’ll be here.’

It didn’t feel like much of anything, at first. Kes had her hands in a gentle hold and occasionally increased the pressure, but it was nothing B’Elanna considered alarming. Kes’ eyes were closed the whole time, her pale brow furrowed, beads of sweat breaking out on her hairline, so B’Elanna kept her own eyes open and observed her.

She was tiny, and she was sweet, and she had the softest voice B’Elanna had ever heard, but Kahless: Kes was a _powerhouse_. B’Elanna could practically feel Kes’ body temperature rising as she delved deeper into the prison, seeking out guards with her mind; she could damn near feel the electricity radiating off her skin. When she was like this, holding hands with Kes was like holding hands with a generator. It was strange, and intoxicating, and… kind of attractive.

B’Elanna waited with more patience than she had ever exhibited before until Kes’ eyelids started to flutter; at first a few times, and then more often, and then it was happening so rapidly, her breath coming so fast, that B’Elanna made a decision and squeezed her hands.

Kes hadn’t told her to speak, hadn’t told her she needed to, but she found herself doing it anyway. ‘Kes,’ she murmured. ‘Kes, stay with me. B’Elanna. You’re doing fine. We’re in the cell. Stay with me.’

Minutes felt like hours, but finally Kes’ wide, damp eyes blinked open – B’Elanna couldn’t breathe for a moment as Kes stared at her, unseeing – and then she smiled. ‘Oh,’ she murmured. ‘Oh.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m… fine.’ She looked down at their joined hands and pulled hers away, stretching and shaking them out. ‘I’m fine.’ She turned her gaze back up and smiled like the sun. ‘Thank you, B’Elanna. You were wonderful.’

‘What happened?’

‘I got through to one of the guards. It was tiring. They… their minds are unlike ours. It took time and energy to read them. They are keeping us here for ransom – for parts. They hope _Voyager_ will trade them warp coils against our safe return.’

‘Great.’ B’Elanna rolled her eyes. ‘They could have just asked.’

‘Something so simple wouldn’t occur to them, I don’t think. They are a deceptive race. Highly paranoid.’

‘Okay,’ B’Elanna said. She pushed herself up off the floor and started to pace again. ‘So we know what they want and why we’re here, but what can we do about it? We can’t just wait here to be rescued, that’s…’

‘Oh, no,’ Kes said, an impish smile on her lips, teasing in a way B’Elanna had never seen, ‘I don’t think we’ll have to do that.’

As though on cue, the door to their cell rumbled open, and the guard who had opened it walked away without looking back. ‘What—’ B’Elanna started to say, but then she thought better of it, hauled Kes up, and ran.

*

‘You were incredible,’ B’Elanna told her, genuinely awed, once they had fought their way out of the cave – they had only encountered two guards, and had had the element of surprise on their side both times – and were standing in warm, blessed sunlight. They still didn’t have their equipment and they couldn’t contact the ship, but B’Elanna was confident the others would be looking for them, by now, and that they’d find their life signs now they were back in the open. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that. Did you know you could manipulate minds that way?’

‘Not for certain,’ Kes murmured. ‘I’ve been spending time with Tuvok over the last few months, honing my abilities, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to test this particular skill. It isn’t…’ she looked down. ‘It isn’t one I’m especially proud of. Altering the will of another being.’

Emboldened by the sun, by the adrenaline, by the intimacy they had shared in the cave, B’Elanna took a step closer – she was taller than Kes, a rare and exciting novelty – and gently tilted her chin up with two fingers. ‘Kes,’ she said. Kes gazed at her, open and vulnerable and lovely. ‘You did nothing wrong. This ability is an incredible gift, but it could be used for unspeakable evil. You would never, ever do that. You would only ever use it to help your friends, or to save someone’s life.’ She smiled, almost shyly. She wasn’t used to making reassuring speeches; there was something about Kes that made it easier than it had ever been before. ‘I can’t think of anyone better suited to that kind of power.’

B’Elanna’s hand was still hovering at Kes’ chin, and Kes took it, caught B’Elanna’s fingers in her own. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘That means a lot.’

‘Thank _you_ ,’ B’Elanna countered. ‘If it weren’t for you, I’d still be down there, staring at the wall.’

Kes was smiling up at her so sweetly, so warmly, that B’Elanna didn’t even think: she just leaned in and kissed her.

They only stopped when the away team beamed down, and a flustered Harry asked them if they were okay.

They both grinned, and they both said yes.


End file.
